Autumnal: A Prelude to Winter
by ProcurerFaith
Summary: Repost: AU. Matt reflects on his life as a gang member, and the spiralling number of cruel acts he had to commit and suffer for the sake of 'the family'. Prequel to 'One Good Cop'.


Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon. All Digimon characters are owned by Toei and A. Hongo and such. I am making no money from this fic. It is a just-for-fun project. The only bit I own is my own characters and the way the words are put together.

**Author's Note; 23rd June 2008** – Please remember, edits may not quite appear as you remember them, as I'm hashing together the beta and the original uploads. I do not plan to come back and amend this work (if I start picking holes in it, I'll never stop XD)

* * *

_**Autumnal**_

_**A Prelude to Winter: 'One Good Cop'**_

_Now I lay me down to sleep-_

_I pray to God my soul will weep_

_If I should die before I wake_

_I pray that God my soul will break._

This is my prayer. As I lay down to sleep every night, these are my words. It's a joke, really. There is no God, no higher being. This life is what _you _make it, not what some, storybook, from two thousand years ago says it is. That's what I believe anyway.

I found a new God.

I found a new way to get noticed.

And when I realised what it actually meant, I hated it.

It all started when I was back in school. It had been a bad week. I'd had a big bust- up with Tai, TK was more interested in his new friends that he was in me- which at first was fine. But I got to see less and less of him. Dad found a big story and was never home.

And, as Pearl Jam put it 'Daddy didn't give affection, and the boy was something that mommy wouldn't wear'.

I wasn't getting out much.

Then, a beam of light through my darkness. Or the beginning of the darkest stage in my life.

A boy came to talk to me. Said I had the right stuff.

"Right stuff to do what?" I asked.

"You can hang with us. We're special."

"Special at what? Bullying the other kids? That's not special, that's a joke." I laughed. I knew this boy and his gang. I knew what bullies they were- I'd already warned them away from TK.

"My dad can do special things." The boy retorted.

"Like what?"

"Like make all your wildest dreams come true. All you have to do is listen and be loyal. Do as he asks and you'll never go wrong."

"Yeah, right."

But by the end of the day I was walking home with them. It was something Tai said, some snide comment he'd made in-between classes just before school's out.

"New friends, Matt? Good. Sometimes, you can be really tiresome for the old ones."

That did it. I spun around to face him- and floored him with one punch. Tai knew me well, but even he didn't expect that one.

"Well, maybe _I'm _tired of the old ones, too!"

Kairaihiko was right.

Everything was good at first. All I had to do was run errands. Deliver packages. Sometimes hide stuff in the apartment- Dad was never there, it was easy.

It wasn't until TK found one of the packages, and I saw the hurt look on his face that I really acknowledged what I was doing.

I was running_ drugs._

"Matt? What's this?" TK produced the latest package and looked at me, his expression already telling me that he knew.

"TK! Put that down!" I yelled, snatching it off him and hiding it in the box in the corner- where it had been since we'd come in from school that day.

"Tell me what you're doing with that, Matt. Tell me what it's doing here in Dad's apartment." TK insisted. "Tell me you're _not _doing what I think you're doing. But most of all, tell me the truth.

"You're not taking that _crap_ are you?"

"Of course not!" I snapped back to my worried brother- and I was telling the truth. I might be ferrying smack around, but there was no way I was taking it.

"Then what are you doing with it?"

"TK, the less you know, the better!"

"Matt, you're hiding it fr-"

"Let it _go_!"

"_No!_ I'm telling Dad!" TK turned to run.

That was the only time I remember ever really hitting my brother; out of pure anger and fear.

The look of hurt I got will haunt me forever, and no matter what I do I will never be able to compensate him for that act.

And that was just the start of my regression into jerkhood again.

I remember, one day, I was brought up before Kairaihiko's father. The Ningyoumawashi. The Puppet Master.

And right then, I was the puppet.

He asked me why I continued to work for him, why I had been drawn into his 'family'. It was something I had asked myself many, many times. When I found it difficult to answer him straight off, he asked me about my father. How was he, what was he doing with himself… Without fault, I answered him as politely as I could.

Dad was closing in on a story about rival gangs in the area and the rising amount of drug trafficking in Tokyo. He didn't then know that his son was part of it- but I think he suspected.

It was dangerous. I knew that. By then, I had been a member of Ningyoumawashi's 'family' for two years. I knew all _too_ well how dangerous it was for my father. I knew they had killed others for less.

I didn't warn him. I should have.

Ningyoumawashi stood, and put his hand on my head. I lowered it.

Then he put a gun in my hand.

"Go forth and divide." were his words to me.

I had never held a gun before. It was heavier than I imagined. I was scared of it. What if it went off in my pocket?

"Don't be silly!" laughed Kairaihiko. He showed me his and clipped off the safety. "That's what _this _is for. So you don't blow your nuts off."

Several of us in the group were given a piece of paper with an address on it. We were told to meet in a certain place.

We met there, only then knowing who else was going to be with us on this little trip. I greeted everybody- most of them politely, as I had never met them before and they were all older than me. They grinned. One of them said,

"We still have to condition that out of you, huh?"

I looked up, unsure of myself.

The paper turned out to be an address; a mansion, five miles out of town. I looked up at it as we saw the guards posted on the outer walls. I didn't know why we were there, or what the plan was until the eldest member of the group broke the silence we had been keeping.

"When we go in, go in with your guns blazing." The others all nodded. I could see the gleam in Kairaihiko's eyes. Myself- I wasn't so sure.

"You mean…I have to _use_ this?" I asked, cautiously, holding the gun gingerly in my hand. My words earned me a look of scorn and the cold shoulder.

When we burst in, all I could hear was shots and all I could see was the magnesium flash of guns. I couldn't get my brain to clear, all I could feel was panic. I held the gun in my hands merely as a security blanket; I couldn't have used it if I'd tried. I found myself screaming in terror- something I hadn't done in a long time. Tears ran down my face and eventually I found myself sitting in a corner, my head in my arms, rocking back and forth.

Suddenly, I was yanked to my feet and a gun was thrust in my face.

"You weakling," one of the elder members growled, half-strangling me with my own collar. He threw me down and aimed the gun at me.

Kairaihiko pleaded with him, tugging his sleeve, telling him that his father would be angry if he lost his second favourite pupil. The man's face screwed up and he thrust Kairaihiko aside.

"You will learn. You have a gun in your hand, weakling. Will it be you or me?" he said to me. I crept to my feet, shaking. I had never been so close to the barrel of a gun before. The man moved back, away from me slightly and aimed again. I heard the metallic grinding inside his gun.

And instinct kicked in.

I raised my arm.

The gun kicked back.

The other man fell to the floor.

And I stood, trembling, my first kill scratched down on the rock of my soul.

I felt all the colour drain from my face, and my stomach did flips as I realised what I had done. I was seventeen, and I'd killed a man.

As it happened, he was just the first of many. I'd lost count by the time I was twenty-one.

The price I paid, first for my weakness and then for my treason, was a high one.

The 'family' killed my father.

That night, when I got home, the police were crawling all over our apartment block. My heart sank as I thought of all the possibilities, possibilities I tried hard to convince myself didn't exist. They did.

I found TK, in fits of tears, with Mom, outside the apartment.

"Mom? What happened? What's happened to Dad?" I asked, panic stricken. Mom looked at the blood on my clothes and paused before she tried to answer. But I had already crossed the police line and was in the apartment.

"Who the hell are you!? Somebody get this joker off my crime scene!" yelled a deep, powerful voice.

"Dad! Daddy!?" I yelled, trying to push through the tall, strong men in my way. I couldn't call up the strength I needed, but before I was forced out of my home, I saw a white sheet over a familiar shape.

"Dad!!" I yelled, tears streaming down my face.

That's the last memory I have of my father. Not the one I would choose, given the chance.

TK and I fought on the day of Dad's funeral. He was angry at me; he knew Dad's death had something to do with what I was caught up in. Although he'd never told Dad about the drug-running, pretty much all my old friends knew what I was doing now. My mother even knew.

It was this day that TK chose to drop the bombshell.

"I'm joining the police force as soon as I'm old enough."

"You're _what_?" my mother and I asked in unison.

"I can't let what's happening to us happen to anyone else." TK said, head lowered.

"Oh. Great." Mom raised her hands in the air, tears in her eyes. "I have two sons; one's a crook and one's a cop. Where did I go wrong?"

"You divorced Dad." I said, simply. That got me a healthy slap from my mother, and a down-payment from TK against what I'd done to him two years previously.

Two people, neither of whom I would evermore- or even then- raise a hand against.

Tai was down on the list to join the police too, and this was just one more way in which I felt he was encroaching on my brotherhood with TK. But then, what kind of a brother was I? Some kind of little g, nothing better to do than go around running drugs and killing people.

Hah.

Yeah.

And then there was Tai.

Somebody for whom compassion became unfeasible and living for anything other than work became a forgotten proclivity.

God, I sound like Izzy.

Poor Izzy.

I tried, man. I _tried_.

When the 'family' busted in to take over Izzy's apartment block, I knew three minutes before they were going to do it. And I called it in to him.

"Izzy, get out of there."

"Who is this?"

"Izzy, it's Matt. Get out of there now, you're about to be run over with gangsters!"

"Matt?"

"Just listen to me! Get out!"

Goddamn curious Izzy.

He just _had_ to go and take a look.

When I got to his floor, I kicked open the door. Better me than somebody else- or so I thought. Izzy stood before me with a baseball bat. His look was determined, and he looked really angry.

"Anybody else and you'd be dead, Izzy- you idiot! A baseball bat's really not gonna hold you against _this_." I waved my gun weakly.

"What do they want here, Matt?"

"I can't tell you that!"

"Why do you want me out!?"

"Because I don't want you _dead_!"

"Ishida?" An older man stood at the door. I'd lost my chance to get Izzy out. There was only one way I could save him now. And that was by taking him hostage. I grabbed my one-time friend and put the gun to his head.

"He knows something." I said to the older man. "Leave him here with me, and I'll get it out of him."

"No. We're taking them to a central point, Ishida." The man grabbed Izzy and bundled him out of the door. I stood, shaken by my own actions, my head lowered as Izzy looked back at me. A look of pure hatred.

I'd played my trump card. And I'd lost.

When I finally got to the place they were keeping everyone, Izzy's face was already black and blue. I instantly felt shame, more than I had at any moment since Dad's death.

A man, Kairaihiko, sat down in front of the most curious person I have ever known.

"So. Da Hipstah says you know something. What do you know?"

"I don't know anything. I wouldn't be involved in your idiotic and selfish drug running!" Izzy spat. I think seeing me made him angrier.

"So. You _do_ know something." Kairaihiko's voice was cold.

"Kai…leave it…" I said. Izzy's head snapped around and he stared at me, almost staring me down.

"No, if he knows something about the other gang, we need to get it out of him."

"He doesn't know anything, Kai! Let him _go_!"

"Then why bring him here!" This was turning into a cat fight. I looked down. I couldn't tell him that I'd had him brought here because a bid to protect him had gone wrong.

"I…I'll question him. He'll answer to me."

"I wouldn't bet your bullets on it." snarled Izzy. I shot him a 'be quiet' look and turned back to Kairaihiko.

"Leave him with me."

"Who _is_ he to you?" He snapped.

"Nobody!" I snapped back.

"Then you won't care if I do _this_!" Kairaihiko turned around, aimed his gun, and fired. Izzy didn't stand a chance. He didn't have anywhere to run.

"_Izzy_!" I screamed, tears filling my eyes. Flashbacks filled my vision and the memory I went to sleep with that night was Izzy bleeding on the floor, his eyes wide open in his head.

After that, Tai was tighter on my butt than he'd ever been before. And TK had to spend more time trying to protect me, and as a cop that was a hard thing for him to do. We couldn't see each other anymore after Izzy. If TK was found harbouring me, he'd be thrown off the force and I'd be thrown in jail. Tai knew our bond was tight, and it grew tighter and tighter as time progressed. It seemed strange to me, and still seems strange, that the things that happened to us didn't pull us apart. Somehow, they only succeeded in pushing us closer together.

Tai spent a lot of time just _waiting_ for me and TK to slip up.

I spent my twenty-eighth birthday swapping bullets with Tai because of it.

"Give it up, Ishida! You're not getting away this time!" Yelled Tai from the ground below. I was by the window on the second floor of a _Selfridges_ store, and I wasn't ready to give up yet. But I had to be careful who I was shooting at.

TK was down there.

And I didn't know where.

"Down to surnames now, huh, _Kamiya_?!" I yelled back, thrusting the extra cartridge into my handgun.

"You got it, _baka_. You're gonna pay for what you did to Izzy!" I paused. That was still a source of hurt to me.

"That was an accident!"

"There are no accidents in gang warfare, man!"

A shot echoed in my ears and a chunk of concrete was knocked out of the wall by the shattered window.

"_Itai_!" I yelled, my face cut by the glass. That made me mad.

"So, you're a hot shot now, huh, Tai? Who did you _rub up_ to get where you are, you homo-whore!" I could hear his hackles rising from twenty feet away.

"You _bastard_!"

"Be proud, Tai. You made me this way!

"You didn't get there by yourself! Not the age we are! DCI? Sh'yeah, right!"

"Shut _up_!" More bullets. It was then I knew I'd hit a nerve. I laughed, finally clicking what I was saying myself.

"You _tart_, Tai!" I yelled, aiming my gun out of the window.

I did get away that time. Next time, I might not be so lucky.

And still the eternal question; what was I thinking when I got caught up in gangland at the age of fifteen? The simple answer: I wasn't prepared. I didn't really know what it was. But the things that I've learned? Strange white packages are rarely gifts. Killing your friends hurts. Guns are heavy only when full of bullets. Blood washes off your hands but not out of your hair. Pain washes out of your hair but not off your hands.

I know you're asking it. TK has asked me the same question for the past thirteen years: Why? You really want to know why? They gave me a sense of _family_. At first, Ningyoumawashi treated me like a son, you were among friends the whole time- one of you was wronged, the wrongdoer got wronged back full pelt by the whole crew.

I felt _loved_. I felt…complete. And it wasn't until the whole thing became a trap, until I realised that the whole thing was an elaborate, gilded cage that I began to hate it and hate it and hate it, trying every possible way to run, to escape back to my real family. What was left of it. TK tried to help me out of it once, only to find himself dragged before his superiors and pinned down in an office.

First Dad, then Izzy… And hundreds more Dad's and Izzy's in the world get 'disposed of' by the 'family' over the days and weeks in a year.

One more hit tonight. One more hit and I'm out of it. I don't know how yet, but TK's promised to pull out all the stops on helping me escape from a fourteenth year of hell. Now TK's a big shot in the NPA, a minion only under Tai. But I'm proud of him. Even if it means one day he has to put a tip in me.

This time it's the Police HQ on Fifteenth and Macer. One last hit. The whole gang's going out on this one.

I know TK will be there. I know I have to protect him as best I can; they'll be baying for his and every other cop's blood. He hates me protecting him, but he's my blood. It's my job and my instinct.

I just hope…hope that when it comes down to it…I'll be able to do the right thing. That whatever it is, finally, I'll be able to do the _right thing_.

* * *

_**Hole**_

_No place for trace hidden in_

_A shade of mace,_

_My face,_

_Covered in blood rain,_

_nothing but inner pain_

_Nobody else to blame,_

_drowning in my own shame,_

_No paradise _

_for vice_

_Entrapped mice_

_Enshadowed by Ice_

_Smack and Bullet,_

_Watch me, mine_

_Go through it_

_I watched you do it_

_Play cat and mouse_

_From my house,_

_I see places of,_

_Traces of_

_Hidden prosperity of_

_All around me of_

_Makers and_

_Shakers of_

_Shit and_

_I'm deeper and deeper_

_And deeper _

_In shades of dark _

_And deeper _

_And deeper_

_And deeper…_

'_Hole' Copyright__ ProcurerFaith 5__th__ November 2000_

_-fini-_

* * *

Thank you for reading my fic - I hope you enjoyed it :) The companion fic to this - 'One Good Cop' - can be found in my fic list :)


End file.
